I've never seen either show, so no. In fact, a lot of the shows that are butterflied away (like MASH and the Brady Bunch), I've never seen, so I don't feel bad about their lack of existence.

Well, I don't care much about MASH (Other than the film directed by Robert Altman) or the Brady Bunch, so I share the same feeling.
 
Well, I don't care much about MASH (Other than the film directed by Robert Altman) or the Brady Bunch, so I share the same feeling.

Although i do wonder what sportswriters use as the go-to term for a team suffering a huge number of injuries TTL. Of course, an enterprising one could still know of the term "M*A*S*H unit" and start to use it, but it would take a lot longer to gain momentum.

Come to think of it, I wonder what teams beset by injuries were called before the 1970s.
 
Seriously, the second I saw you compare it to "Ozymandias", basically every bad thing that could happen popped into my head.

I'm not sure what's going to happen will be bad, but Brainbin promises us "revelations" in the penultimate cycle. I figure we will be surprised and stunned, like someone who watched "Ozymandias" live.
 
I was wondering if the better economic climate, more population etc means attractions such as RMS Queen Mary in Long Beach do significantly better ITTL?

Several boneheaded decisions regarding the ship were made when she arrived (removing her engines, crappy rewiring, change if use/destruction of rooms etc) as well as general bad management over the years almost caused her to be lost. Can The Queen be saved and thrive on This Wacky Redhead's world please?
Unfortunately, I can't say with any confidence that I'd be able to butterfly the fate of the Queen Mary ITTL, especially with such a late POD.

Well reading a little further than before the Queen Mary was retired after the POD in 1967, many bid for her but the City of Long Beach won and it was to here the liner was brought. However just across the bay is Disneyland at Anaheim - the Corp had plans to build DisneySea at Long Beach but the plans fell through several times (before being built in Japan with a QM replica).

My thought is that Jack Wrather - a local TV/Media/Hotel magnate (he built the Disneyland Hotel) gets involved in Queen Mary from the start. Jack and his wife apparently had good memories of the ship from having travelled on her.

Perhaps Jack can bring Disney onboard for their Disneysea Experience right from the start, or even his own chain and experience can be utilised to stop some of the destruction Queen Mary experienced in the 60's/70's by using QM as a set for TV shows, better development as an museum and resort etc esp if Disney are involved?
 
Well reading a little further than before the Queen Mary was retired after the POD in 1967, many bid for her but the City of Long Beach won and it was to here the liner was brought. However just across the bay is Disneyland at Anaheim - the Corp had plans to build DisneySea at Long Beach but the plans fell through several times (before being built in Japan with a QM replica).

My thought is that Jack Wrather - a local TV/Media/Hotel magnate (he built the Disneyland Hotel) gets involved in Queen Mary from the start. Jack and his wife apparently had good memories of the ship from having travelled on her.

Perhaps Jack can bring Disney onboard for their Disneysea Experience right from the start, or even his own chain and experience can be utilised to stop some of the destruction Queen Mary experienced in the 60's/70's by using QM as a set for TV shows, better development as an museum and resort etc esp if Disney are involved?

That sounds like a great idea!! DisneySea, however, was a concept developed in the late 1980s after Disney acquired Wrather and wanted to construct a second theme park in California. Don't think that theme park concept will come to fruition ITTL.
 
A Challenger Appears!
A Challenger Appears!

I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.

Apocryphally attributed to Thomas J. Watson, Chairman and CEO of International Business Machines (IBM), 1943

Whether at the office, at school, or at home, the question now appears to be who doesn’t need a computer, and companies are lining up to prove they have the best ‘computer for everyone’…

Excerpted from “The Macromarket for Microcomputers,” as featured in the July, 1983 issue of Circuit Magazine [1]

Desilu Productions had no shortage of cash cows in the 1980s, but perhaps one of the most unexpected – at least in the bemused opinion of the burgeoning conglomerate’s owner, Lucille Ball – was its share in Syzygy, a video game company which had licenced many of Desilu’s television properties and developed video games adapted from them – and in so doing, created an incredibly profitable new revenue stream for their parent studio. Star Trek had been adapted into several different video games by this point, first for the arcade, and then for the home VCS – followed by the more advanced VCS II. As a result, the success of the Star Trek (tabletop) role-playing game inspired a new layer of synergy for Syzygy. Immediately after the RPG had been released, amateur programmers got to work writing a version of the game that could be played on the emerging microcomputers of the era. Needless to say, these versions could not be sold legally; however, as with many other Star Trek fan works, distributors were not prosecuted so long as plausible deniability could be maintained (and as long as a profit was not sought in said distribution). Indeed, when those in charge at Syzygy became aware of the Star Trek RPGs produced for personal computers (through, longstanding rumour had it, a copy smuggled into the Syzygy offices and played on Nolan Bushnell’s microcomputer), they suggested creating an officially licenced version of the game for their HCS microcomputer – a more sophisticated and versatile variant of their dedicated VCS console. This suggestion was accepted by Desilu’s licencing division, and The Official STAR TREK Role-Playing Game for SYZYGY HCS was released shortly thereafter – programmed in only a few weeks by one of the several fans of the tabletop RPG on-staff. It was the first and only HCS game not to include a graphical interface – the game shipped on floppy disks which were filled to the brim with flavour text and had no room for graphics. [2]

The HCS was among the most powerful microcomputers on the market, thanks in large part to the TMS9900 16-bit microprocessor at its core, which it shared with the VCS. This legacy provided the infrastructure and economies of scale necessary for the HCS to be comparably priced with other high-end machines, with the additional edge of being extremely user-friendly. This was a result of the guiding design principles of the chief architect of the HCS, Steve Wozniak. He had joined Syzygy in 1973 after having been informally commissioned by another employee, Steve Jobs, to reduce the number of computer chips in the Breakout arcade cabinets. Syzygy was offering their employees $100 for each chip they could eliminate, and Jobs had promised Wozniak that he would split the bonus – without disclosing the amount of said bonus. Wozniak had eliminated 50 chips, but Jobs gave him only $350 – a mere 14% of the amount to which he was rightfully entitled under their arrangement – having insisted that the total bonus was only $700. He justified this decision due to the stripped-down design being incompatible with a coin slot or scoring mechanism (vital for arcade play). Still, Syzygy saw potential in the design despite its limitations, and no less an authority than Nolan Bushnell sought to confer with Jobs about it. As Jobs could not possibly hope to answer his questions, Wozniak was invited along – and it wasn’t long before the truth emerged. [3] Of the seven deadly sins, the only one which Jobs possessed in greater abundance than avarice was pride, and so he resigned from Syzygy before Bushnell could fire him, teaming with his fellow deserter Ronald Wayne to form a new company, Apple Computers. [4] This company would be forced to change its name following a successful lawsuit against it by Apple Corps, the Beatles’ record label – legal costs capsized the nascent company and drove Wayne into bankruptcy. [5] (Jobs, who was in his early twenties, had no appreciable assets which could be seized by creditors.) Wozniak was hired to take Jobs’ place at Syzygy, quickly rising through the ranks to become their most prominent technical mind. He was the principal architect behind Syzygy’s home computing hardware during the company’s Golden Age. [6]

The Home Computing System, Wozniak’s baby, was introduced in 1981, at a time when much of its competition in the microcomputer market (especially on the lower end) was still powered by 8-bit microprocessors. Thanks to Wozniak’s genius for streamlining, along with vertical integration, the computer sold with the introductory price of $1,111. [7] By this time, the VCS II was selling for about $200 – or less than one-fifth the price, as the bells and whistles associated with the HCS added up to a lot. The HCS was essentially a very large keyboard (in roughly the same shape as the VCS consoles, though with a hard beige plastic casing as opposed to faux-wood paneling) with four ports for joystick controllers, as well as a port for the monitor (sold separately), and an audio output (either speakers or headphones). [8] Unlike most microcomputers of the era, the HCS had a graphical interface – instead of exclusively entering text commands, the user could employ their joystick controller to move an arrow icon across the screen, and then press a button as the arrow moved over various other icons to hit that icon and run the associated program or function. [9]

The HCS competed with a number of other microcomputers which were marketed for personal use – most notably the Commodore 64, cheaper than the HCS by a considerable margin but far less powerful and slower to boot, with a text-only interface (though graphical programs – and games – could be played on them). IBM, long a titan in the industry (where it was affectionately known as “Big Blue”), sold their “Personal Computer” or PC (which, despite the name, was intended primarily on business use) for more than the HCS, focusing on office applications such a word processor and spreadsheet technology. [10] IBM did not develop this software in-house – instead outsourcing this development to the prominent Tippecanoe Software company, headquartered in West Lafayette, Indiana, which created both the first widely-used integrated “PC Office” suite of programs, along with the dedicated “Personal Computer Operating System”, or PCOS. [11] Along with the Syzygy HCS, it was one of the first microcomputers that did not use a derivative of the BASIC programming language – first developed in 1962 – as its primary interface (though both included on-board BASIC interpreters).

Syzygy, having two parallel lines of hardware, marketed them as competitors to the two different types of microcomputers. “Budget” lines with spartan features and technological limitations – a market dominated by Commodore – were competitors of the VCS (which eventually released a keyboard peripheral, though never a “true” native operating system in the classical sense). More lavish hardware with extensive software suites and cutting-edge technology were the competitors to the HCS – primarily the IBM PC. The two were neck-and-neck on the sales charts through the early-1980s; Syzygy marketed their HCS more toward home hobbyists, whereas the IBM PC was sold to commercial customers. Institutional buyers were split down the middle – schools and libraries tended to prefer the HCS due to its ease of use and the larger library of games available, but bureaucratic offices naturally preferred the IBM “PC Office” suite – which included top-of-the-line word processors and spreadsheets (with graphical printout capabilities!). However, over time, the battle lines tended to muddle – the team of programmers at Syzygy quickly developed in-house knockoffs for the PC Office suite (called “SyzygyWorks”), whereas Tippecanoe Software’s experience developing games (including for the VCS) helped to stock the PC’s game library – and they also eventually co-developed an equivalent to the Syzygy point-and-hit interface, which was codenamed Wabash after the river which flowed through West Lafayette (though it was publicly known as PCOS v.2.0).

However great the strides in electronic gaming had been in recent years, the contemporary rise of the role-playing game proved that tabletops could still capture the interest and imagination of even the youngest generation of players. Surprisingly, the surest evidence of this phenomenon did not originate stateside, but in Japan, a country known for its booming economy and otherwise-slavish devotion to the hottest technological trends. One of the hottest hobbies of the 1980s – not just in the Land of the Rising Sun but eventually worldwide – was the product of a company founded in the 1880s

The Nintendo Playing Card Company (Nintendo being a Japanese phrase meaning “leave luck to heaven”) was established in 1889 in Meiji-era Japan. The company originally manufactured hanafuda cards, local playing cards which were used in a wide variety of games, similar to the 52-card French deck standard to Western play. However, the profitability of this line of business declined in the years after World War II, forcing the company – under the stewardship of its leader, Hiroshi Yamauchi – into other avenues. Most of these were radical departures (including, but not limited to, “love hotels”, taxi services, food manufacturing, and television production) but the company would eventually find lasting success aping the Danish toy behemoth, LEGO, with their N&B Blocks. [12] Nintendo did not shy away from direct comparisons of the two products, believing that theirs came out more favourably due to the larger variety of distinct shapes. LEGO, on the other hand, chose to sue for copyright and trademark infringement. (At about the same time, they also sued a Canadian company, Mega Bloks). [13] However, they would eventually lose the suit – though Nintendo found that their innovations worked far better on paper than in reality. The oddly-shaped N&B block designs (including their popular cylinder, cone, and dog-bone shapes) did not tessellate properly, limiting the potential of buyers to innovate on pre-planned designs with their own creations – a disadvantage not shared by LEGO pieces (and Mega Bloks, for that matter). Therefore, the N&B product line was revamped – pieces which did not tessellate were treated as ancillary, primarily for decoration and detailing, with the core product being comprised of more standard geometric shapes, such as squares, rectangles, triangles, and hexagons. Nintendo also built on their previous history of licencing arrangements by seeking to build playsets of established properties, primarily Disney (which was hugely popular in Japan). [14] N&B Block playsets of famous set pieces – including the home of the Seven Dwarfs from Snow White, Captain Hook’s ship from Peter Pan, and the spaghetti restaurant from Lady and the Tramp – became hot sellers for Nintendo. However, this did not completely sideline their traditional playing card business. In fact, their newfound yen for licences would culminate in Nintendo becoming the exclusive manufacturer of collectible baseball cards for Nippon Professional Baseball, an eminently logical move which paid off almost immediately – and even more so, in the longer term…

However, Nintendo wouldn’t make a name for itself stateside until the 1980s, when it introduced an innovative new children’s card game which, against all odds, became a worldwide fad. And it all started with a young beetle-fighting enthusiast and would-be entomologist named Satoshi Tajiri. Born in 1961, by the early 1980s he had begun writing and publishing his own magazine called Game Freak, focused on toys and games of all kinds. An avowed Nintendo fanboy, he dreamed of working for the company someday – a dream that came much closer to reality after he met a fan of his magazine, artist Ken Sugimori. [15] The two became fast friends and bonded over Tajiri’s brainchild – a game in which pocket-sized monsters (similar to the stag beetles of his childhood) fought one another in sporting matches. They named their concept Pocket Monsters. It became apparent that the fighting system that Tajiri had in mind was an RPG – a burgeoning genre even in Japan – as his pocket monsters would need to fight each other according to a structured system of rules. The brainstorm which enabled he and Sugimori to bring the game to Nintendo’s attention was that many of these rules could be included on the backs of playing cards. Indeed, the prototype presented to Nintendo executives was modeled directly on their NPL baseball cards. [16]

The Pocket Monsters battle system was based on the rock-paper-scissors model, where each monster “type” (roughly equivalent to a class in conventional RPGs) had strengths and weaknesses to certain of the other types. This meant that no monster could possibly be strong or weak against all other monsters, that there was no overall winning strategy as in other competitive games. For instance, the various “types” included fire (weak to water), water (weak to plant), and plant (weak to fire); in fact, each type was strong and weak to multiple other types. Plant was strong against earth, but weak to bird and insect types. Indeed, bird types were also strong against insect types – but weak to ice and lightning. The original generation of Pocket Monsters cards had twelve types: Fire, Water, Plant, Earth, Bird, Insect, Ice, Lightning, Fighting, Poison, Spirit, and Metal. Each type had multiple exemplars. [17]

To have a battle, each player would agree to a fight and on the number of pocket monsters each of them would be allowed to bring to the fight. The official rules for Pocket Monsters called for each competitor to bring an equal number of monsters to any battle – this was a natural result of the win condition being the elimination of all the other player’s monsters. This allowed for a fair amount of flexibility in determining the lengths of matches – a two-monster match would be enough for recess or a coffee break, whereas a dozen or so could last for an hour or more. (The standard match-up was nine-to-nine, inspired by the size of a baseball team – which also meant that only nine of the twelve types could be represented in a match, allowing for greater strategic variations in play.)

Each player would be allowed to assemble their deck secretly, but once the match began, they would have to show their roster to the other player, facilitated by large full-colour illustrations of each monster on the obverse, or front, of the cards. On the reverse, as was the case with the baseball cards which had helped to inspire them, the cards featured capsule descriptions of the monsters, along with basic statistics (speed, to determine which monster attacked first, and hit points, which were represented in play by counter units) and the list of attacks each monster could make. However, some of these moves would need to be “unlocked” through defeating a certain number of enemy monsters over the course of a battle. This served to differentiate monsters within the same type category – some had a wide array of mediocre moves available to them from the outset, whereas others had exceptionally powerful moves that could only be accessed after defeating several opponents.

In yet another inspiration from the sales and marketing of collectible baseball cards, only one card was sold in each pack. However, the content of these packs was concealed from the end consumer by opaque foil wrapping – as was the case with a box of chocolates, the purchaser had no way of knowing which of the 72 pocket monsters they were going to get. Many cards (especially the more powerful ones) were much rarer than others, and were often distributed only to specific geographical regions – usually those which were particularly far-flung from major urban centres. Lore abounded of that one hard-to-find card being shipped off to remote locations like Hokkaido. These rumours had unintended effects when the 1984 Sapporo Olympics brought a large number of tourists from Kanto and Kansai to the island, many of whom stopped by local card shops just in case – clearing out inventories and causing widespread shortages. This spoke to the sheer number of interested buyers, and Nintendo was already on its way to manufacturing the second generation of Pocket Monsters to meet the demand. The high degree of collectability naturally attracted consumers who had no interest in playing the game; indeed, the inability to know which cards were inside their original packaging before purchase led to a burgeoning secondary market, with cards carefully unwrapped and stored in plastic or laminated. The rarest of the cards sold for tens of thousands of yen. As a consequence, counterfeiting was rampant, and imitators clogged the shelves. [18]

The 1984 Sapporo Olympics did help to introduce Pocket Monsters to a wider audience, as Nintendo was one of the main sponsors of the games. Pocket Monsters had already been exported to the Americas and Europe, as well as to Red China, by this time. In the particularly toyetic 1980s, they became a huge hit, especially when they were paired with ancillary licenced product, such as plastic models, plush toys, N&B Block playsets, and a manga and anime series whose English-language translation reached American shores that same year. A video game based on that anime was planned for release on SEGA home consoles in 1984, and localization into foreign markets was virtually assured.

SEGA was originally known as Service Games, a company which formed out of Hawaii in 1940. In 1951, after the war, the company’s owners decided to relocate their operations to Japan – which at that time was still recovering its lost industrial base and had plenty of cheap labour available of suitable technical expertise to manufacture the jukeboxes, slot machines, and later arcade cabinets produced by the company. In 1965, the company officially changed its name to SEGA, a syllabic acronym typical of the Japanese language, and was one of a great many companies to fall under the corporate umbrella of none other than Gulf+Western – that conglomerate bought out the original owners in 1969, in a move by Charles Bluhdorn to expand into one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. [19] It was in direct competition with the Desilu-Syzygy tandem that Bluhdorn and his underlings agitated for SEGA to expand their video game operations to cover home consoles – the Syzygy VCS was a smash success from 1977 onward, and Desilu was raking in a fortune from their product licencing. 1977 was also the year of Journey of the Force – part of the same genre, loosely defined, as Star Trek, and which featured a heavy “space dogfighting” element. Ironically, some observers noted, the Star Trek video game for arcades (which was ported for the VCS) would have made a much better Journey game. A transparent Star Trek clone bearing the Journey name made it to arcades on SEGA cabinets in 1978 – the game was still in development when Lucasfilm launched their infamous lawsuit against Paramount Pictures, but as the licence had already been awarded to SEGA (intra-corporate negotiations being what they were), the game was completed, and sold briskly. Surely, executives reasoned, a port made for a notional SEGA home console would sell briskly as well, with the added benefit of the consoles themselves selling briskly? George Lucas couldn’t touch a penny of the sales from those, so even if (heaven forbid!) Paramount were to lose his frivolous lawsuit, there could still be some profit in the Journey property after all.

As a result, SEGA began development on a home video game console in late 1978. The SG-1000, short for the SEGA Game 1000 (given an “English” name by Japanese designers due to the trendiness of that language in their culture) was launched in 1979, becoming the first home console introduced in Japan – and, after the Syzygy VCS, only the second in the world of any consequence. [20] Journey of the Force was a launch title for the SG-1000 – attempts were made to introduce the console into the American and European markets, though this did not happen before the verdict in the Trial of the Century came through in 1980, depriving SEGA of the desperately needed seed money in order to expand (especially in recessionary times). However, Paramount never licenced the Journey game for the American home console market, in anticipation of this planned expansion – thus making it one of the earliest “exclusive” titles, in the modern sense of the term. (Belatedly, in 1984, Lucasfilm – having assumed control of all Journey of the Force licences – authorized VCS/HCS versions of the game.) SEGA itself was divested by what remained of Gulf+Western after the Trial of the Century gutted the organization (and an ill-timed fatal heart-attack left it rudderless), sold to another conglomerate, this one based out of Japan, in 1984. This conglomerate almost immediately moved to release a new console (successive generations of the SG-1000 proving increasingly inferior to the VCS II), and one which would be marketed in the rest of the world…

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[1] Circuit magazine is TTL’s version of Byte magazine, a microcomputing publication which ran from 1975 to 1998, and was known (and respected) for its broad editorial scope.

[2] The floppy disks in question are 5½-inch disks, each capable of storing 140 kilobytes of information.

[3] Jobs misleading Wozniak and depriving him of his rightful share of the money is all OTL, though Wozniak didn’t find out about this until ten years later – butterflies result in Bushnell spilling the beans much earlier ITTL. What might have been water under the bridge after a decade had passed and both Steves had made a mint from Apple is a whole other animal ITTL, and it mortally wounds their friendship before the fateful decision to leave Syzygy/Atari is made in the first place.

[4] Ronald Wayne formed part of the initial partnership in Apple Computer alongside the two Steves in 1975, holding a 10% stake in the company – which he sold less than two weeks later, for $800. (He would receive $1,500 the following year, after Apple had incorporated, in exchange for forfeiting any further claims against the company.) Had he retained his 10% share to the present day, it (and he) would be worth over $60 billion. However, he sold his interest for fear of what capsizes him ITTL – he (and, more importantly, not the two Steves) had assets which could be seized by creditors.

[5] IOTL, Apple Corps agreed to settle their lawsuit against Apple Computer in 1981, for what would be revealed decades later to have been a miniscule sum of $80,000. (Contemporary legal experts estimated anywhere between $50-$250 million.) Why does the suit press on ITTL? Butterflies, mostly – and John Lennon being a greedy, ruthless shark. (More like “Give Me A Piece”, am I right?)

[6] After the collapse of Apple Computers following their loss in Apple Corps v. Apple Computer, Steve Jobs decided to change tack and eke out a career in sales. As of 1984, a banner year for his career ITTL as well as IOTL, he is an infomercial pitchman for his own highly successful direct retail company in the vein of Popeil Bros./Ronco. Admit it, the patented Steve Jobs lectures of OTL translate very well to the classic infomercial style of the 1980s: “Just one more thing…” is, after all, little more than a variant of “But Wait, There’s More!”

[7] IOTL, the IBM PC released in 1981, with an introductory price of $1,565. The Apple III, the most direct analogue to the HCS released by Apple in this period, had an introductory price set at a whopping $4,340 (for the basic model) in 1980. With such a huge pricing gap, it’s easy to see why the PC became the industry standard, relegating the Apple to a niche it has enjoyed ever since.

[8] Later production runs of the HCS would come in different finishes, including the “classic” faux-wood of the VCS, re-emphasizing the “it’s not just a video game, it’s a piece of furniture” aesthetic.

[9] The point-and-hit interface of TTL is obviously based on the point-and-click interface popularized (though not created) by Apple IOTL – the TTL Syzygy interface is more simplified, however, because the HCS is not quite as powerful as the Macintosh, and it’s more based on video games since that’s what the hardware was designed to support.

[10] The main difference between the IBM PC of OTL and that of TTL is what makes it tick: the 8-bit Intel 8088 IOTL, and the 16-bit Intel 8086 ITTL. Although the 8086 is more expensive than the 8088 (which is why IBM went with the 8088 ITTL), here the more widespread use and acceptance of 16-bit technology (along with the HCS having a 16-bit microprocessor, as opposed to the 8-bit microprocessors used by Apple) forces their hand. As a result, the PC is a bit more expensive than IOTL – about half again the price of the HCS ($1,699 for a basic, no-frills model).

[11] Widely known amongst detractors as the “POS” – and yes, the PCOS is indeed TTL’s equivalent of DOS.

[12] N&B Blocks were 100% OTL, right down to the unusual shapes (which were, naturally, advertised as a selling point). Though they ultimately were not successful IOTL, they are immortalized in a level of Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins. (The final level in the Mario Zone contains a castle made out of them – yes, I bet you thought they were LEGO bricks when you were a kid too, just as I did.)

[13] LEGO’s litigiousness is the stuff of legend, and Mega Bloks, an OTL company, is the most well-known target of their (failed) lawsuits.

[14] This is well before LEGO caught a second wind with licencing, which is arguably what they’re best known for today. In a classic example of Newer Than They Think, the first licenced LEGO playset dates to as recently as 1999, with LEGO Star Wars (along with Winnie-the-Pooh), and was a direct result of the company experiencing a consistent decline in profitability over the previous several years.

[15] All of this is as per OTL – Tajiri did indeed publish what we in the West would call a fanzine in the early-1980s, and it was through these efforts that he met with Ken Sugimori. Game Freak was later used as the name of the video game developer at which the two work to this day (IOTL, it was formed in 1989), and that studio’s most famous product is, of course, Pokémon.

[16] IOTL, the original Pokémon types were Normal, Fire, Water, Grass, Electric, Ice, Rock, Ground, Fighting, Flying, Psychic, Poison, Ghost, and Dragon – ITTL, Psychic and Ghost have been merged into Spirit, Rock and Ground have been merged into Earth, and Normal has been eliminated entirely. The original 150 Pokemon included multiple types with only a single exemplar (or a single evolutionary line): Ghost-types were represented only by the Gastly family and Dragon-types were represented only by the Dratini family. In addition, dual-typing does not (yet) exist for the initial Pocket Monsters ITTL – that would be introduced later for greater variety. IOTL, many of the 150 Pokemon were dual-types – indeed, there were no pure-Flying type, Ice-type, Rock-type or Ghost-type Pokemon in the original game (the Gastly line was part-Poison, which helped to capsize their advertised strength against the juggernaut Psychic-types). Only a single Grass-type Pokémon (Tangela) was not also Poison-type.

[17] Basically, the game plays like a cross between tabletop RPGs in the Dungeons & Dragons vein and something akin to the Strat-O-Matic system, using the stats of each player featured on their collectible cards. It’s quite different from the OTL Pokémon Trading Card Game, a simplified derivative of Magic: The Gathering (first published in 1993).

[18] Speaking from personal experience. Maybe I couldn’t find a legitimate Squirtle – maybe I had to resort to getting one of those ugly cards instead.

[19] How could I possibly resist working SEGA into this TL when Gulf+Western owned the company from 1969 to 1984 IOTL, right? Their ownership of SEGA actually preceded the more famous acquisition of Atari by Warner Communications (Bushnell sold to them in 1976), thus creating the delightful (or terrifying, depending on your outlook) possibility of vertical integration between movie studios and video game developers as early as the 1970s… something that never quite happened IOTL.

[20] This gives SEGA a lead of five years over OTL – where the SG-1000 was not released in Japan until 1983, and (as a result of that year’s Great Crash) never saw release outside of the Land of the Rising Sun. (Their follow-up console, the Master System, was released in North America and Europe in the wake of the Nintendo Entertainment System’s enormous success.) This is despite the core of the SG-1000 being a variant of the Zilog Z80 8-bit microchip, first released as early as 1976 – another example of advances in computing technology greatly outpacing the necessary infrastructure in this era. Obviously, the SG-1000 is not exactly the same as that of OTL, but they’re far more alike than the five-year gap might lead you to believe.

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And now, to properly celebrate reaching the million-view milestone, here is a proper update! This post was co-written with e of pi, who also deserves credit for tirelessly encouraging me to work on it!

There you have it, I think that just about covered most of the major players people were interested in reading about – and you know what they say: be careful what you wish for, you may get it. (Although I imagine some of my British readers will be very pleased with me, for reasons which should be obvious if you know anything about video game culture in the UK.) And as for high-end microcomputers? PC vs. HCS? A far more even battle than IOTL, to be sure. What can I say, I love Clashes of the Titans. (SNES vs. Sega Genesis/Mega Drive? Best. Console War. Ever.)
 
Someone do their research with nintendo and sega, awesome braibin, for that your timeline is the top notch of pop culture.

I want to play that pokemon TCG, the idea is too good i want to use for other timeline, can you borrow that? :eek:

Wonder what is up miyamoto, making playset of N&B blocks?

We need to hire Shozou Kaga to get this too: http://fireemblem.wikia.com/wiki/Fire_Emblem:_Trading_Card_Game

Interesting for Sega,a nd yeah, that was weird why gulf and western not used sega more, but Isao Okawa did loved sega that much
 
Pokemon in the 80's!
And as an RPG!

... I'm speechless:eek:

Also, I imagine Nintendo releasing some cheap home console, which would flop on release, some time in the future
 
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...so, what you are telling me is that, in spite of almost 20 years worth of butterflies, the Sega SG-1000 and Pokemon are still things ITTL?
 
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...so, what you are telling me is that, in spite of almost 20 years worth of butterflies, IBM, Sega (let alone the Sega SG-1000), and Pokemon are still things ITTL?

IBM was founded in 1911

Sega was founded in 1941

and Pokemon was a childhood dream of Satoshi Taijiri.

Doesn't really surprise me.
 
IBM was founded in 1911

Sega was founded in 1941

and Pokemon was a childhood dream of Satoshi Taijiri.

Doesn't really surprise me.
Okay, you got me with IBM and Sega (somehow, those slipped my mind)... but still, you gotta give me the SG-1000 and Pokemon; hell, just Pokemon (which caused said mind slipping).
 
Okay, you got me with IBM and Sega (somehow, those slipped my mind)... but still, you gotta give me Pokemon (which caused said mind slipping).

Eh, okay. Pokemon is a little implausible to be happening
However, I'm a massive Pokemon fan, so I am delighted to see it here.
 
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